Collaborative storytelling experiences in social media: Influence of peer-assistance mechanisms

Collaborative storytelling activities in social media environments are generally developed in a linear way in which all participants collaborate on a shared story as it is passed from one to another in a relay form. Difficulties with this linear approach arise when collecting the contributions of participants in to a coherent story. This study proposes a hypermedia approach to enable students to integrate the episodes of others to develop different branches of stories. Since these linear and nonlinear approaches facilitate students in developing stories in quite a different manner, students’ perceptions of linear and hypermedia approaches differ in their collaboration mechanisms, which may in turn affect positive inter-dependence and ultimate success in the collaborative storytelling. The results of an empirical study show that the performance of students in the hypermedia group was superior to that of members the linear group insofar as perception of collaborative process, peer support, authorship, and collaborative result where concerned.     

Social media and mental health in democracy movement in Hong Kong: A population-based study

Social media use has proliferated in the past ten years and studies are beginning to investigate the associations of social media use with political movements and mental health. This study extends this literature by testing a novel hypothesis that social resource loss on social media (e.g., “unfriending”) may be associated with increased symptoms of depression and anxiety in social upheaval. A population-based sample of 1,208 Chinese Hong Kong citizens (mean age = 46.89; 52.4% female) was recruited by random digit dialing in February 2015, two months after the conclusion of the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong. Respondents reported social resource loss on social media, and anxiety and depressive symptoms. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that social resource loss on social media was positively associated with depressive symptoms but not anxiety symptoms. Age moderated the positive association between social resource loss on social media and depressive symptoms. Simple slope tests revealed that the association was significant only among middle-aged (39–55 years) and older (≥56 years) adults but not younger (18–38 years) adults. The current findings shed light on the role of social media in mental health during political movements across different age groups.     

Social capital expectation and usage of social media: the moderating role of social capital susceptibility

This study aims to identify the motivations of social media users who click ‘like’ to the post of their friends. We posit that this behaviour is not solely based on an instant feeling or reaction to a post, but a more complicated action that involves calculation and expectation of the future social media use. We first apply social capital theories to identify the types of expectations, and then differentiate these expectations based on the communication styles of social media where private and public relationships coexist. From these, we develop a social capital expectation matrix in the context of social media. In the research model, we discuss how these social capital expectations motivate people to use social media, including the moderating effects of social capital susceptibilities, based on expectancy theory of motivation. To validate our model, data collected from 291 social media users are analysed. This result confirms that people click likes to share their interests and display their network to others. Conversely, the relational dimensions of social capital including capital recompense and social inclusion exerted significant interaction effects only when they were considered along with capital susceptibilities.     

Crisis communication,learning and responding: Best practices in social media

As noted by Seeger (2006) the notion of best practices is often use to improve professional practice; to create research and functional recommendations to use in a specific situation. This essay describes best practices in crisis communication specifically through the use of social media. It provides suggestions and approaches for improving the effectiveness of crisis communication and learning with and between organizations, governments and citizens. Seven best practices for effective crisis communication using social media are outlined.     

as social support: Relational closeness,automaticity, and interpreting social support from paralinguistic digital affordances in social media

Many social media facilitate paralinguistic digital affordances (PDAs): one-click tools for phatic communication to which senders and receivers alike ascribe meaning. This research explores the nature of social support perceived from the receipt of PDAs within social media, seeking to understand how individuals ascribe supportive meaning to PDAs based on (1) their goal in the post to which the PDA was used as a reply, (2) relational closeness with the PDA provider, and (3) the perceived automaticity of the PDA received. A national survey (N = 325) explored the receipt of PDAs across five social media, and facilitated cross-platform analysis. Analyses reveal both main and interaction effects among the three proposed antecedents, so that intentional PDAs from relationally close providers to messages seeking social support were perceived as most supportive. Findings reveal individuals heuristically make idiosyncratic sense of the same cue from different senders in different situations.     

Intentions to use social media in organizing and taking vacation trips

This work proposes a theoretical model to explain the factors determining the intentions to use social media when organizing and taking vacation trips. Understanding the antecedents of the tourists’ use of these technologies is considered to be crucial for organization managers and destination policy makers. This use of social media technologies determines which elements of the trip might be used by the tourist thus having a great impact on the market. The model and its hypotheses have been tested by means of an approach based on structural equations with the PLS technique. The study was conducted on a sample of 404 individuals who normally use the Internet and had traveled on vacation in the previous 12 months. The conclusions of the study reveal that the intentions to use social media are directly influenced by the perceived benefits of that use (functional, psychological and hedonic and social); however, the costs do not significantly affect the predisposition to use such technologies. It is also shown that there is a series of incentives such as altruism, availability, individual predisposition or trust in the contributions of others which facilitate and promote the use of this type of technology when organizing and taking tourist trips.     

When media allow the user to interact,play and share: recent perspectives on interactive documentary

ABSTRACT

The evolution of digital media has inspired new narrative forms within the media context. In the last few years, interactive documentary has presented complex and alternative ways to access information. This article presents an analysis of this statement consisting of the case study of five international productions: Bear 71, A Short History of the Highrise, Pirate Fishing, Do Not Track and Párkinson, que tiemble el camino. The production of interactive documentary in online media as a journalistic format is tackled with a multidimensional approach which incorporates the product, the user’s perception and the author’s view. The exploration of new formats in online media is linked to innovation and a contemporary response to the audiences, who are now able to interact, play and share in an environment favoured by mobile communication and the skills of the current society.     

Social networking and digital gaming media convergence: Classification and its consequences for appropriation

Within the field of Information Systems, a good proportion of research is concerned with the work organisation and this has, to some extent, restricted the kind of application areas given consideration. Yet, it is clear that information and communication technology deployments beyond the work organisation are acquiring increased importance in our lives. With this in mind, we offer a field study of the appropriation of an online play space known as Habbo Hotel. Habbo Hotel, as a site of media convergence, incorporates social networking and digital gaming functionality. Our research highlights the ethical problems such a dual classification of technology may bring. We focus upon a particular set of activities undertaken within and facilitated by the space—scamming. Scammers dupe members with respect to their ‘Furni’, virtual objects that have online and offline economic value. Through our analysis we show that sometimes, online activities are bracketed off from those defined as offline and that this can be related to how the technology is classified by members—as a social networking site and/or a digital game. In turn, this may affect members’ beliefs about rights and wrongs. We conclude that given increasing media convergence, the way forward is to continue the project of educating people regarding the difficulties of determining rights and wrongs, and how rights and wrongs may be acted out with respect to new technologies of play online and offline.

Social impacts in social media: An examination of perceived truthfulness and sharing of information

Twitter, Facebook, and other social media display the combined opinion of users as collective opinion. The purpose of the work reported here was to examine how collective opinion might influence the perceived truthfulness and the sharing likelihood of health-related statements on social media. Experiment 1 revealed that, when evaluating the truthfulness of a statement, participants adopted the collective truthfulness rating associated with the statement. Similarly, Experiment 2 showed that the likelihood that participants would share a statement followed the collective sharing likelihood associated with the statement. These social impacts were extensive, taking place for statements perceived as true, debatable, and false. These results contribute new insights into how people perceive and share information on social media as well as how collective opinion might affect the quality of information on social media.     

Consuming,sharing, and creating content: How young students use new social media in and outside school

This survey study investigated 186 secondary 2–5 school students from two schools to understand how and why they used new social media both in and outside of school to consume, share, and create content. It found that whereas students tend to consume and share more social media content outside of school they create more in school. Perceived importance of sharing content with peers or others is the most significant predictor having positive impact on all social media activities, both in and outside school. However, the negative impact of self-regulation ability on outside school social media activities implies the conscientiousness of their social media engagement, which calls for a further investigation on the quality of the social media content.     

Cyber-volunteering: Social media affordances in fulfilling NGO social missions

Cyber-volunteering behavior through social media is becoming popular among nongovernmental organization (NGO) members. Cyber-volunteering activities have become more aggressive with the availability of social media in recent years. The objective of this paper is to discuss voluntary behavior in fulfilling NGO social missions through social media usage based on affordance theory. There is substantial literature discussing social media affordances in the context of enterprise organization, but there has been less literature discussing the activities of NGOs in social media. Hence, seven key affordances derived from the enterprise organization were used in the context of NGO working behavior, visibility, editability, persistence, virtual collaboration, synthetic representation, individualized, and collective. This research applies a qualitative methodology using semi-structured interviews with 25 NGO members from seven selected Islamic NGOs in Malaysia that are active in different fields of Islamic education. The interviews focus on social media affordances that have influenced the execution of social missions in the NGOs. Data was analyzed using thematic coding based on the seven identified key social media affordances. The results suggest that the social media affordances related to cyber-volunteering are achieved through promoting, training, fundraising, knowledge sharing, and problem-solving activities. These affordances are highly influenced by cyber-volunteering behavior through work culture and personal privacy. The collective, individualized, and visibility affordances are most associated with cyber-volunteering behavior, followed by persistence, virtual collaboration, and editability, and synthetic representation is found to be the least.     

The effects of helping,self-expression,and enjoyment on social capital in social media: the moderating effect of avoidance attachment in the tourism context

ABSTRACT

A majority of senior Internet users maintains persistent social connections with others through social media (SM), such as Facebook and Twitter. This research explores the impacts of helping, self-expression, and enjoyment on bonding social capital and bridging social capital which in turn influence SM involvement; it also explores the moderating effect of avoidance attachment among senior SM users. The results show that helping, self-expression, and enjoyment have significant impacts on bonding social capital and bridging social capital. Also, bonding social capital and bridging social capital have significant effects on SM involvement. Furthermore, relationships between helping and bonding social capital, between self-expression and bonding social capital, and between self-expression and bridging social capital are stronger for seniors with high avoidance attachment. Conversely, the relationships between enjoyment and bonding social capital as well as between enjoyment and bridging social capital are stronger for seniors with low avoidance attachment. Accordingly, the results of this study provide theoretical contributions to the literature of behaviour and information technology. In addition, some implications of the research and various strategies for practitioners and marketers that can be used to better increase users’ involvement in SM for tourism-related activities are discussed.     

An assessment of equivalence between paper and social media surveys: The role of social desirability and satisficing

Investigation of the underlying mechanisms responsible for measurement variance has received little attention. The primary objective of this study is to examine whether paper and social media surveys produce convergent results and investigate the underlying psychological mechanisms for the potential measurement nonequivalence. Particularly, we explored the role of social desirability and satisficing on the measurement results. We collected data via five different survey modes, including paper survey, ad hoc Web survey, online forum (message boards)-based, SNS-based and microblog-based surveys. The findings show that socially desirable responding does not lead to inconsistent results. Rather we found that satisficing causes inconsistent results in paper versus online surveys. Sociability reduces the possibility of engaging in satisficing that results in inconsistent results between traditional Web surveys and social media-based Web surveys.     

Understanding compulsive social media use: The premise of complementing self-conceptions mismatch with technology

Some anecdotal accounts and research reports have suggested that obsessive social media involvement could turn into a compulsive behavior among university students. Unfortunately, the research that sheds light on the possible conditional nature of that relationship is scarce at best. Therefore, this study tries to address this issue by developing a contingency-based model and tests it using data gathered from a sample of university students. The model postulates that compulsive social media use arises due to self-awareness factors, and together they in turn predict problematic learning outcomes. It also postulates that these relationships are moderated by the influence of technological factors. The results indicate that self-esteem has a significant negative influence on compulsive social media use and that interaction anxiousness has a significant positive influence on the same. The results also reveal that only compulsive social media use has a significant direct influence on problematic learning outcomes; and that social media complementarity plays a moderating role in the model. We discuss the implications of these findings for research and practice.     

Social relationships and information dissemination in virtual social network systems: An attachment theory perspective

Web-based communication via social networking sites has become an integral method of communication, raising the question of whether the well-established Attachment Theory remains applicable to modern relationships. This communication shift is also likely to affect the information dissemination dynamic; i.e., how internal attachment working models relate to virtual modes of communication. Three studies (354 participants in total, median age 27) examined the applicability of Attachment Theory to web-based social network communications. Using self- report measures (Study 1) and an experimental simulation (Study 2), the results indicate that attachment security level predicts an individual’s number of social ties and willingness to initiate web-based relationships. Secure individuals emerged as best situated to become social hubs. Study 3 reveals that a decrease in avoidance scores predicts an increased willingness to deliver information to others. Anxious participants exhibited less willingness to deliver highly threatening information but more willingness to deliver neutral information to others.These findings support the applicability of attachment internal working models to predicting web-based social network communication, and suggest that Attachment Theory can be a predictor of the dynamics of web-based dissemination of information.     

Mitigating information overload in social media during conflicts and crises: design and evaluation of a cross-platform alerting system

ABSTRACT

The research field of crisis informatics examines, amongst others, the potentials and barriers of social media use during conflicts and crises. Social media allow emergency services to reach the public easily in the context of crisis communication and receive valuable information (e.g. pictures) from social media data. However, the vast amount of data generated during large-scale incidents can lead to issues of information overload and quality. To mitigate these issues, this paper proposes the semi-automatic creation of alerts including keyword, relevance and information quality filters based on cross-platform social media data. We conducted empirical studies and workshops with emergency services across Europe to raise requirements, then iteratively designed and implemented an approach to support emergency services, and performed multiple evaluations, including live demonstrations and field trials, to research the potentials of social media-based alerts. Finally, we present the findings and implications based on semi-structured interviews with emergency services, highlighting the need for usable configurability and white-box algorithm representation.     

Branding with social media: User gratifications,usage patterns,and brand message content strategies

The emergence of social media provides a new platform for developing brand–consumer relationships. The aim of the current study is to examine the differences in Chinese users’ gratifications of different social media and the impact of brand content strategies on the quality of brand–consumer communication via social media. In the first study, 209 SNS and 161 microblog users were surveyed. Five dimensions of social media gratifications emerged from the factor analysis. Significant differences in the strengths of gratifications were found between SNS and microblog users. Usage patterns of SNS and microblog are analyzed and compared. In the second study, we examined the impact of users’ gratification and the type of social media on the effectiveness of different brand content strategies through a two-week experiment involving 60 SNS users and 61 microblog users. Implications for developing branding strategies on different social media platforms are discussed.     

Social media in conflicts and crises

ABSTRACT

The growing importance of social media in conflicts and crises is accompanied by an ever-increasing research interest in the crisis informatics field in order to identify potential benefits and develop measures against the technology’s abuse. This special issue sets out to give an overview of current research on the use of social media in conflicts and crises. In doing so, it focuses on both good and malicious aspects of social media and includes a variety of papers of conceptual, theoretical and empirical nature. In six sections, the special issue presents an overview of the field, analytical methods, technical challenges, current advancements and the accepted papers before concluding. Specific topics range from cyber deception over information trustworthiness to mining and near-real-time processing of social media data.     

Service co-creation in social media: An extension of the theory of planned behavior

Social media have become a major channel through which consumers interact with firms and other consumers. This paper examines the factors that drive consumers to co-create in social media and proposes a theoretical model that extends the theory of planned behavior to include perceived usefulness as a key antecedent of consumer attitudes toward co-creation in social media. The model was tested using responses from 743 Chinese consumers. Results of structural equation modeling confirmed that perceived usefulness was an antecedent of consumer attitudes toward co-creation in social media. The relationship between perceived usefulness and customer attitudes toward co-creation was moderated by the level of consumer involvement, and that relationship was found to be more salient for a high rather than a low level of consumer involvement. Practical and theoretical implications are given.